Originally Posted By: aleck rand
Wow! Now there's a compliment for you.

Icelander: Are you an Icelander? Then you know the name of my favorite Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indrittason (Jar City, Silence of the Grave, etc.) Man, is he good! I noticed a strange accent mark used in the Icelandic language when the name is spelled IndriDason. I've always wondered what that mark was.

I know three things about your country: (1) it is volcanic, (2) people do not have "surnames" as Americans know them: every one is "son of" or "dottir of"; (3) Icelanders somehow turned into very bad bankers. I hope that last sad episode has corrected itself. Last I heard, Iceland was ... am I getting this right? ... for sale?

With kind regards,

Dean Clark (aka Aleck Rand)

Ok, that's quite a letter right there, thank you very much for the expressed interest. Let me see if I can answer all of your points there:
Yes, I am icelandic, but you wouldn't believe how few actually get that from my nick and still ask me where I'm from, heh! laugh
I'm quite familiar with that author, he's our best seller after all. I've only read one of his novels myself so far, but liked it a lot. And that 'accent mark' in his name isn't an accent mark at all, it's an entirely different letter altogether, pronounced like a voiced 'th' in english. So now you know smile
And now for your 'three things':
1. Check! (just google Eyjafjallajökull, or maybe you already heard about it).
2. Also 'Check!'..doing fine so far wink...
3. Ah, now we hit the snag! Ok, so we did run into a recession, if not financial crisis, a few years back, along with quite a few other western countries, including USA and UK (the latter actually blamed us for theirs!), but whether iwe are still in that slope is debatable. And as for the country being "for sale"... where do you get this stuff?! laugh

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should!
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